Goodbye, "McDonald's"

They say that the golden arch of this winged diner is familiar to the world better than the symbols of all other religions - from the cross to the crescent. Many believe that there is nothing good in this. Fighting with a variety of gastronomic culture, “McDonald's” willing the planet with its universal menu. In principle, I agree with this, and in America I wander in McDonald's only by need - in search of a restroom. Moreover, I have nothing to do in it abroad. But now, in the days of the expulsion of this flagship of American catering from Moscow, I want to recall the historical moment when he appeared there for the first time.

When in 1990 for the first time after emigration I visited Moscow, the line was already standing. Silent, patient, even solemn, she stretched out along the boulevard, curling in the lanes. Three generations were waiting for lunch at once, many stood with suitcases, after a long road. Non -consumer ones were torn here, like us - to Taganka, and, in general, for the same: for the taste of freedom. Carefully around the crowd, I suddenly saw an idol of youth in it. Cowboy, climber, womanizer and translator, he arrived here from the Riga station with children from three wives. Comrade hugged me warmly, without leaving the line busy in the morning, and showed me “V” with his fingers: we’ll break through!

Now this holiday is more difficult to understand than ridicule. But I would not do this, because we all come from a hungry childhood. The first McDonald's in 1990 excited by 1990 played the same role that Tarzan is for Brodsky, for Aksenov - pants with a pipe, for Dovlatov - a fank of Parker, for me - a folding umbrella. Under the arch "McDonald's" the West began. “Big Mack” resembled ectoplasm in a spiritual session: the otherworldly crossed the border of the two worlds and, materialized, became visible, tangible, almost edible. And this means that the voices from the radio did not lie.

Overseas catering hit Muscovites more than corn - Khrushchev. It is no coincidence that in both cases the acquaintance of the antipodes began to eat. Anthropologists emphasize that it is the semi -signed food that serves as an intermediary, reconciling the contradictions of civilizations that have come into contact. So the sailors fascinated the Hawaiians with canned salmon, immediately similar and not like the fact that the natives caught in the ocean. In Moscow, a similar function was performed by a reminiscent of a cutlet, but not reaching it with a hamburger. His secret is that he offers sinless food, which can be fed angels. The product of high technology, not agriculture, a sandwich with a hamburger lost earthly, carnal, animal origin. Meat - from a refrigerator, sauce - from a can, rolls - from a bag. Such a toy lunch can and should be eaten childishly-with your hands. Yes, and sterile, delicate, as if already chewed food recalls a hearty and serene life in maternal womb. Plunging in his familiar womb, the American feels at the hearth. The temple of hamburgers is like a reserve house.

For the first time, I managed to evaluate the psychological comfort that these simple establishments reward their customers in the same Moscow, but a year later, when on the eve of the Gaidar reforms we wandered around the city with Avoska rubles, which were equally useless in those years, “Russian cuisine in exile”. Perhaps, the foreigners deprived of the stoops accounted for even worse than local ones. In the evenings, they were saved visiting, where a familiar sorceress is not known from what was baking a cake of 12 layers. But in the mornings, the stomach was reduced from hunger, like cheekbones - from anger. In a gulk from the emptiness of the Universem, one department worked - "juices - water". The cone with tomato, however, turned out to be vacant, but no one would flatten on the muddy apple. There was categorically nothing, and then McDonald's surfaced. The queue for him has long subsided, but the oddities remained - the coffee ended, three rubles were taken for the ketchup. Nevertheless, in that hungry Moscow, he gained the status of a gastronomic shelter: an oasis of a dull order in the ocean of not only culinary chaos.